


Fever Dreams

by alternatealto



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Gen, Sick!Wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:35:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1528193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatealto/pseuds/alternatealto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilson is sick.  House manages to come through for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fever Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Written during the hiatus between Season 7 and Season 8.

**Fever Dreams**

 

  
God, he was hot.   

A while back, he’d been cold.  So cold he’d stumbled to the closet and pulled his heaviest robe out to wear over his pajamas, then dug out the electric blanket, laid it across the comforter on the bed and turned the control to the highest setting. Then he’d crawled in, curled up tight and lain shaking, teeth chattering as he waited for the heat to penetrate.  He knew, he  _knew_  that he wasn’t really cold – last time he’d taken his temperature it had been 103.7, this was just the flu screwing up his internal thermostat.  But god, he’d  _felt_  cold, even when he fell asleep. 

And now he’d woken up roasting hot, kicking off sheets and blankets, stripping off every scrap of clothing.  He was lying spread-eagled, staring up at the ceiling light and thinking woozily that he should take his temperature again.  It might be higher; it sure hadn’t gone down.   Had he taken that ibuprofen?  He couldn’t remember.  He closed his eyes to think about it.   

“You’re burning up,” a voice whispered in his ear.  It was almost unintelligibly soft, but yet seemed to bounce and echo all around the room, as if he was surrounded by some vast, empty space.  Or maybe the space was in his head.  Yeah, that had to be it – fever made your brain swell, didn’t it?  And then your head had to get bigger.  It was good that he was a doctor and knew these things.

Wait.  When your brain swelled up, you died.  And if you were dead, and you were burning, then – 

He forced his eyes open.  No flames, but it was intensely bright all around him – so bright it hurt.  And  . . .  and there was someone in front of him.  Someone who wasn’t – who  _couldn’t_  be –  human, because there was a brilliant aura all around him, sparkling and coruscating and pulsating in vivid rainbow colors.   

“Wilson,” that echoing voice again, louder this time, more stern. “Did you take anything?  What did you take?”  The question boomed and vibrated around him, through him.  The sound was a stabbing pain, the brightness was horrible, the way the light danced and swayed around his judge’s head was sickening.   

“I – ” he tried to speak, to say he wasn’t a thief, wasn’t a bad man, didn’t deserve to burn.  Except that he did.  Oh, he did.  Lousy, cheating husband; crappy failure of a doctor; miserable excuse for a friend.  He’d hurt Sam and Bonnie and Julie, he’d hurt House.  And now they were gone, all gone, and he was left to burn, and he did deserve it, he did.

“Burn me,” he said, wearily.  It was no good to fight.  He closed his eyes and gave up. 

“Idiot!” the voice said.  It rang like bells this time, loud carillons and gongs filling his world with metallic clangor.  Did you have to burn because you were stupid, too?  House had warned him about that, about being an idiot, and Wilson hadn’t done anything about it, so he was burning.

House . . . 

He missed House.  If House was here, he’d be all right –  _everything_  would be all right, if House was here. The voice and the banging and the weird, pulsing light would go away.  House might make the burning stop.  House . . . 

“House . . .” 

“Yes.  Me.  House.  Tell me, moron, have you taken anything for the fever?”  Oh, god, would the voice never stop pounding in his head?  He couldn’t . . .

Ahhh.  Cool.  Something . . . a cloth, a pad, something with a sharp, clean, familiar smell.  It moved over his face, over his baking-hot body, leaving coolness behind it. He whimpered a little and opened his eyes again.  The other person was still there, the multi-colored aura around him still shifting in sickening waves, making the pain drill into his head.

Aura.  Head.   _Visual distortion_ , something said inside him, and then,  _headache._  

“Migraine,” he managed to mumble.   

“You have a migraine, too?” the voice asked.  Was there just a tinge of worry in it?  “No wonder you’re not making any sense.”  This time it roared, and he winced and begged. 

“Please . . . loud . . .  _hurts._ ” 

“Listen to me.  Did you take anything with the medicine you use for your migraines?”  

Oh,  _god_ , would this please just stop?  The noise, the light, the heat, the questions,  _please_ , he couldn’t take any more.  The cool cloth came back then, and so did the quiet for a little while, and he sighed in relief.   Then the questioning started again.  “Wilson.  I need to know this, all right?  Just tell me, did you take anything besides the Verapimil when you felt the headache coming on?” 

“Maybe.  Don’t . . . remember . . .” 

“Idiot,” the voice said again, the echoes making it sound like fifty voices shouting in an echo chamber, “here, put this under your tongue. I’ll be right back, okay?  I’ve got to get your temperature down or you’ll wind up with boiled brains.” 

Quiet again.  Blessed quiet.  He could have slept, except that he was hot and thirsty and the room seemed to waver any time he tried to open his eyes.  Then the thermometer was taken away and there was something cool on his forehead, and more cool things tucked into his armpits and between his legs.  And the voice was back.  “Okay, here.  You’re thirsty, aren’t you?  Come on, drink up.”   A hand behind him helped him lift his head a little.  “Here’s the straw.”  He drank eagerly, feeling the cool liquid slide down his parched throat like a benison.  “Take these,” the voice went on, and he swallowed two tablets uncomplainingly, then there was more of the wonderful drink.  At last he was settled gently back onto the pillows, and the delicious cool cloth bathed his face and body again. 

“Go ahead and sleep, moron,” the voice told him, and he did. 

When he was awakened some indefinable time later, he was still hot, the room was still shaking and wavering, but not as badly.  Still, he winced and closed his eyes.  “I know you don’t want to wake up, but I need to take your temperature again,” the voice was saying, the echoes around it shimmering the same way the room was doing.  “Open up.”   

“Thirsty,” he mumbled.   

“Yeah, I know.  Thermometer first, then you get a drink. Open your mouth.”  He did.  There was a pause, then a straw replaced the thermometer and he could drink again. “Well, you’re down below one-oh-five.  That’s something, anyway.”  The things in his armpits and groin got colder.  “Back to sleep.”   

Sleeping sounded wonderful, so he did it.  Every so often, he would wake to a wavering room, more tablets, the thermometer again, then cold liquid and all the other things.  Once, staggering and wincing, he was helped to the bathroom to relieve himself, then put back into bed to sleep, and sleep, and sleep.  At some point his head stopped hurting, but the rest of him ached as if he’d been beaten, his head still rang with every sound, and any light was still too much.   

Then, briefly, he was wide awake.  The room had settled down, and all the noises around him were normal sounds again.  It was dark, though, and he couldn’t see much except the dark bulk of someone leaning over the bed.  Someone who laid a hand gently on his forehead. 

“Well, about time,” that someone muttered.  “You’re sweating – the fever’s finally broken.  Here, time for another drink.”   

He took the straw between his lips, then nearly choked as he realized that without the feverish distortions he could  _recognize_  that voice.  “House!” 

“Drink,” the other man commanded, and he automatically obeyed, taking several swallows before spitting out the straw to exclaim, disbelievingly, “House – you . . . you’re  _here?_ ” 

“Yeah, yeah,” came the answer.  “Back to sleep.  You’ll feel a lot better when you wake up.” 

The joy surging through him was wonderful, but exhausting.  There would be so much to do, so much to think about, when he woke up again.  But it was enough, just knowing House was nearby.  He was cool for the first time in ages, he was happy, he ached less.  House was gently swabbing his forehead with a dry towel, and Wilson heard him yawn.

“God, you must be tired, taking care of me all this time,” he told the other man drowsily.  “Get some rest . . . I’ll be okay now.” 

He could feel the other man’s hesitation.  “I don’t want to leave you alone – you could relapse.” 

“So sleep here,” Wilson told him, yawning widely himself as he spoke. “Bed’s big enough for two.” 

There was silence for a moment or two, then Wilson felt the far side of the bed sink as the other man climbed in.  He smiled to himself, and slept.

 

* * * * *  
 

He woke to the normal noises of a city day, cars honking and traffic rumbling in the streets below the loft, and lay blinking a little and trying to sort out what had happened.   He’d been sick, obviously.  Feverish – he’d had the flu?  Yeah, flu and migraine both, and then House had -

House.   _House!_    

House, back from wherever he’d been hiding since that disastrous night at Cuddy’s place.  Whatever had made him decide to return, he’d at least timed it pretty well. Wilson smiled, and turned his head to look at the friend sleeping next to him. 

The other side of the bed was empty. 

House must be in the bathroom, or – what time was it, anyway? – somewhere else in the loft.  Carefully, Wilson started to sit up, and something slid off the bed and hit the floor with a  wet-sounding thump.  Startled, he looked over the side of the mattress. Oh, of course – one of the gel ice packs he kept in the freezer; he had a vague memory of House putting them in his armpits and groin when the fever was worst.  A look around showed three or four more defrosted ice packs in the bed, as well as a washcloth and towels dropped negligently on the floor. 

He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood.  A little residual dizziness from all the time spent on his back in bed, but not too bad.  And god, he needed to pee.  He made his way to the bathroom and took care of that, noticing that the bottle of isopropyl alcohol House had used to try to cool him was still sitting on the counter next to the sink.  Wilson  smiled a little, then climbed into the shower.   Fifteen minutes later, clean and dry and wrapped in a bathrobe, he wandered out into the living room, a little surprised not to smell coffee or hear the television. 

There was no sign of House in the living room.  No House in the kitchen or the den. Puzzled, Wilson searched the entire loft, from lobby to den to guest room.  No House anywhere to be found. 

What the hell – ?  Had he gone out to get breakfast (Wilson looked at the clock)  – okay, lunch?  Why?  There was plenty of food in the kitchen, including frozen pizza. A quick check of the trash showed that House evidently hadn’t eaten anything while he was here, or else he’d been unnaturally tidy about it.  The kitchen was in its normal spotless state; there were no cups in the sink or crumbs on the counter. 

Thoroughly confused now, he walked back through the lobby to the front door and pulled it open – only to have the security alarm start shrieking at him.  He swore and went to the pad to punch in the code.  The siren shut up, and Wilson went back into the living room and sat down, thinking hard. 

He’d only had the alarm about six months – it had been installed while Sam was living with him, at her insistence.  She was tired, she said, of House simply walking into the place whenever he felt like it – and if he did it, then even less savory people could probably do the same thing.  Now that Wilson thought about it, he couldn’t even remember whether House had been to the loft since the alarm had been put in. 

Regardless, House couldn’t have opened that door without setting it off, the way Wilson had just done.  He couldn’t have  _come in_  through that door, let alone left through it.   

How, then, had he gotten into Wilson’s bedroom?   

He  _had_  been there. Wilson would swear to it by everything he knew. 

He stared thoughtfully at the phone on the table next to the sofa. House had never answered any of his calls, and eventually he’d given up.  But maybe he should try one more time.   
 

* * * * * 

 House winced, squinting hard against the brilliant shaft of sunlight that lay across the bed.  Why the hell had Wilson opened the blinds?  Some sort of passive-aggressive “I’m awake now, so you should be, too” statement?  He groaned, and buried his head under the pillow, waiting for the other man to bump him or poke him or otherwise annoy him into getting out of the bed. 

The bed.   

He’d gotten into bed next to Wilson, worn out with his fight to lower the other man’s temperature.  He remembered worrying about the chances of Wilson’s fever returning, but if Wilson was up and around, then it was likely he was all right.  Still, it wouldn’t hurt to check – the idiot had really been sick, and relapse was a definite possibility.  With a sigh, he pulled his head out from under the pillow and opened his eyes. 

Instead of the tastefully masculine décor of Wilson’s bedroom, he found himself staring at one of the brilliant tropical prints that decorated the wall of the furnished place he’d rented in –  wait, this was impossible.  He  _knew_  he’d been at Wilson’s last night:  the memories were too vivid to have been a dream.  He’d been weaning himself off the Vicodin, so it couldn’t have been a hallucination, and his leg ached fiercely, the way it always did the morning after a day when he’d spent too much time standing or walking.  And – he looked at his hands doubtfully, then carefully touched one finger to his tongue.  There it was:  the bitter residue left by isopropyl. 

But there was no way.  He’d been in the ocean just yesterday morning – there was his damp suit, still in a pile on the floor.  He  _couldn’t_  have been to Princeton and back in so short a time; the idea was ludicrous. 

How, then, had he gotten into Wilson’s bedroom? 

He  _had_  been there.  House would swear to it by everything he knew. 

He stared longingly at the cell phone on the table next to the bed.  He’d never bothered to take any of Wilson’s calls, and eventually the other man had given up. But if he called again, maybe this time House should answer.  
  


 

 


End file.
